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Now you can store your Gmail Offline

When Gmail came out a few years ago extremely was very pleased with the brand new shiny email service that came up in competition with Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail.

However, off late using Gmail has been a real pain. The problem is amplified on slow internet connections. So, now this new announcement has definitely made me a happy.

Gmail has a new Lab feature that uses Gears allows you to store your email offline on your computer. Simply navigate to Settings > Labs and enable Offline support then hit the little Offline button in the top left. You’ll see a screen below.

Hit Next and authorize Offline Gmail to use Gears. Then begins the long wait while Gmail downloads your email to your computer.

From the blog post:

As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.

This is a good feature indeed. I’ll be able to give it a good test drive when I check Gmail on my slow internet connection. I really hope that this solves the irritating message stating that Gmail hasn’t loaded properly.

And, if you are using Gmail for your Domain, you can enable offline support for that as well.

Remember, do not install offline support if you are using a public computer.

So, have you enabled Offline support for Gmail? How has it been working for you?